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Don’t Confuse Staging with Decorating or Interior Design!

Today’s market requires a more sophisticated approach to preparing a home to sell. Staging broadens the appeal of a home by accentuating selling features, promoting flow, maximizing space, and neutralizing color and décor. All of these staging efforts should be done with the goal of quickly securing favorable offers from a greater pool of buyers.

 A BIG Difference 

Don’t confuse staging with decorating or interior design. There are similarities, of course: all of these specialties use color, design, scale, and other elements. However, where interior design caters to likes and dislikes, life choices, and personal style, staging is about neutralizing a home and accentuating the selling features so a wide variety of would be owners can emotionally connect with it. In other words, staging is essentially a marketing tool for selling a house. Style that is too personal or specific to a particular homeowner or type of homeowner can limit the pool of potential buyers. When the home remains too personal, buyers often can feel like they are intruding. They may even have difficulty separating the property from the personality of the owners or décor of the property.

 Here are some practical staging tips to consider:
  • Color statements- make them safe, not boring
Neutral colors come to mind, and rightly so. But,remember, you can go too far with beige. Sophisticated taupe’s, rich tan’s, soft moss green’s, and warm creamy yellow’s can create a welcoming ambiance without making a strong design statement that may eliminate prospective buyers.
  • Gender neutral 
Aim for the middle of the road. Homes and rooms should not be so gender-specific as to make half the population uncomfortable. For instance, if it’s obvious your seller loves pink, recommend she minimize it; combine it with charcoal grey or black and limit it to a bathroom or a child’s room. Relegate lace to the baby’s or little girl’s room, and replace flowery fabric with leaves or geometric or abstract patterns. And it’s not just the feminine touches that need to be addressed. This works both ways. Repurpose trophy rooms, take down the motorcycle and car calendars from the garage, and turn that poker palace back into the wholesome family room the builder intended (and most buyers want).
  • Religion
This isn’t the time to display faith. Religion is very personal and, for that reason, should remain out of a home on the market. Remove anything that strongly conveys specific beliefs. Remember, it is about selling the home, and the décor needs to be something of a blank slate on which the buyer can superimpose his own life.
  • Culture and ethnicity
Play it down, but not out. Given the multicultural, multi-ethnic nature of our society, styles from around the world have been incorporated into home décor. Diverse elements don’t have to be eliminated, but they should be used sparingly so that the home doesn’t feel specific to any one ethnicity or culture.
  • Politics  

Remove anything that projects political convictions. Buyers who have different beliefs may find themselves thinking about the owners and their politics instead of the features of the house. They may also wonder if the rest of the neighborhood is of the same political persuasion as the homeowners and whether they would fit in.